Ripped Away

Year Three: A Rude Awakening, Conspiracy Theories and a Morning Jog

Heracles opened her eyes wearily as she woke up to the sound of her blaring alarm clock. She groaned, turned onto her stomach, buried her face and covered her ears with her pillow to ignore the beeping sound as best she could, but it was a futile endeavor. Heracles groaned again. The one night she got a decent night's rest without being plagued by a nightmare about one of her many sources of trauma (the most recent of which being her second murder victim, Lockhart), and it ended up being cut short by an alarm clock. Worst of all, she was actually having a pleasant dream about her fourth eleventh birthday party at Scarabia before her slumber was so rudely interrupted. Heracles frowned and felt her heart ache at the thought of Kalim and Jamil.

Summer break was almost over. Her third year at the backwards school known as Hogwarts would be starting in a few days, and even though Heracles had had the entire summer to work on her mirrors, she was still getting nowhere with them. Well, she hadn't had the entire summer, but she had had most of it. What time she didn't spend addressing necessary matters always went towards her research.

Heracles hadn't had a lot of socialization that summer. Mostly because the Weasley's (barring Charlie) were all in Egypt visiting Bill for the majority of break. In fact, the only Weasley she had seen all summer was Charlie, who she saw when he delivered Ortho and Norbert to Grimmauld place like he did at the start of every summer. The reason for this was that Arthur had won seven hundred galleons in a Ministry raffle, and the family had used the money to pay for a much needed visit to the eldest child. Heracles had been happy for them (the Weasley's deserved that money more than anyone she knew), but they had been gone all summer, so she hadn't seen them in months and had only heard from them in letters with pictures and souvenirs attached. They offered to let her go with them, but Heracles had declined because she couldn't work on her mirrors in the middle of a desert, and she couldn't afford to put her work on hold for a whole summer. Not to mention Ronald and Percy would be there, and Heracles didn't want to give them the opportunity to poison her (Ronald), or bore her with pretentious conversation (Percy).

Because of all that, the only friends whose homes Heracles had visited that summer had been Luna and Neville (Colin didn't have a floo, lived hours away from London, and Heracles didn't want to learn how to apparate just yet because despite how convenient it could be, she had heard the experience was uncomfortable and could be highly dangerous if not done correctly. Not to mention it was illegal to apparate before she was of age, but since when did she care about the legality of her actions?). Heracles would visit the Lovegoods for tea every Sunday, which was the only time she saw Colin. The boy had agreed to an internship as a photographer at the Quibbler and stayed at the Lovegoods' home every weekend to help Xenophilius. So far, he had had a blast taking pictures of strange creatures out in the field and was already considering going to work for the Quibbler, or at least going into photographic journalism after he graduated.

Heracles would also visit the Longbottoms' for dinner every Friday, which was when she saw Neville. Both Augusta and her grandson had insisted she attend weekly dinners with them so she wouldn't 'end up looking like a malnourished skeleton' when she returned to Hogwarts. Augusta would cook a fabulous meal and bitch about pureblood socialites, Neville would chat with her while worrying quietly about her mental state, and Heracles would eat more food than Americans on thanksgiving. The Longbottom matriarch even hosted Heracles's thirteenth birthday party, which consisted solely of her, Colin, Luna, her father, and Neville. It was nice with plenty of gifts (some of which sent via owl from the Weasleys), but Heracles personally liked the birthday cake Molly made for her twelfth birthday better than the one Augusta made... not that she would tell either woman that.

But Heracles had been spending time on more things than just her social life. For one, she had finally scheduled a will reading. It was supposed to be carried out the day after tomorrow, right before she went back to school. She had put it off for most of the summer, mostly because she didn't want to drag up the buried past, but she knew it was better to just rip it off like a bandaid. Besides, Ragnok had informed her that it wasn't going to be a crowded affair. Apparently, the will only had two living and/or non-incarcerated beneficiaries; her, and her parents' old friend from school, Remus Lupin. All Heracles knew about the man came from the Hogwarts ghosts, and they only told her that he was kind, soft-spoken, and was the Marauder known as Moony. Oh, and that he was a werewolf, not that that was of much concern to Heracles. She already knew someone who could turn into a wolf, so finding out another person could do that wasn't a very scary thought, even though she knew werewolves had much less control over their actions when transformed than Jack did.